QUOTE: Why is a charity giving money to aid a pol with whom the foundation’s head has pending legal business?....Reading through the court’s language in McDonnell, the easier hurdle is “official acts.” The justices were not certain that McDonnell’s various phone calls and luncheons represented official acts...

QUOTE: The corruption allegations are centered on claims of bribery involving vast real estate projects, many of them in Istanbul, that have become a hallmark of Mr. Erdogan’s time in power. No one has been convicted, but several people, including two sons of government ministers, have been arrested, and one of the departing ministers on Wednesday said that the prime minister himself had been involved in the real estate deals facing scrutiny.

QUOTE: Wal-Mart dispatched investigators to Mexico City, and within days they unearthed evidence of widespread bribery. They found a paper trail of hundreds of suspect payments totaling more than $24 million. They also found documents showing that Wal-Mart de Mexico’s top executives not only knew about the payments, but had taken steps to conceal them from Wal-Mart’s headquarters....The lead investigator recommended that Wal-Mart expand the investigation. Instead, an examination by The New York Times found, Wal-Mart’s leaders shut it down.

QUOTE: Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh decided to launch a task force to dig through thousands of cases involving discredited agents, to ensure that “no defendant’s right to a fair trial was jeopardized,”...The task force took nine years to complete its work and never publicly released its findings. Not the results of its case reviews of suspect lab work. Not the names of the defendants who were convicted as a result. And not the nature or scope of the forensic problems it found. Those decisions more than a decade ago remain relevant today for hundreds of people still in the U.S. court system, because officials never notified many defendants of the forensic flaws in their cases and never expanded their review to catch similar mistakes.

QUOTE: Mr. Gingrich, Democrats and Republicans here agree, emerged as one of Washington’s most aggressive practitioners of slash-and-burn politics; many fault him for erasing whatever civility once existed in the capital. He believed, and preached, that harsh language could win elections; in 1990, the political action committee he ran, Gopac, instructed Republican candidates to learn to “speak like Newt,” and offered a list of words to describe Democrats — like decay, traitors, radical, sick, destroy, pathetic, corrupt and shame. Those same qualities are now on display as Mr. Gingrich, a Republican candidate for president, turns his caustic tongue against Republicans and Democrats alike.

QUOTE: an intricate global money-laundering apparatus that, with the bank as its hub, appeared to let Hezbollah move huge sums of money into the legitimate financial system, despite sanctions aimed at cutting off its economic lifeblood....While law enforcement agencies around the world have long believed that Hezbollah is a passive beneficiary of contributions from loyalists abroad involved in drug trafficking and a grab bag of other criminal enterprises, intelligence from several countries points to the direct involvement of high-level Hezbollah officials in the South American cocaine trade.

QUOTE: all across these highlands once ravaged by a 36-year civil war, the region’s bloodiest anti-Communist conflict, Guatemalans are demanding the unthinkable — a strong military, back in their communities. That is how desperate this country has become as gangs and Mexican drug cartels run fever-wild, capturing territory and corrupting institutions so that Guatemala will remain a safe haven for cocaine, guns, money laundering and new recruits.

QUOTE: The dust from Iceland’s spectacular financial disaster — the failure of its three biggest banks and then the collapse of its economy in the fall of 2008 — had barely begun to settle when the country set about finding someone to blame... it is pursuing criminal charges against a politician, former Prime Minister Geir Haarde, for his government’s failure to avert the catastrophe.

QUOTE: Ninety-five years and a day after the infamous Villa raid, another group of armed men crept into Columbus [New Mexico]....They led away in handcuffs Columbus’s mayor, police chief, village trustee and numerous others accused of smuggling guns, ammunition and body armor across the border to Mexican outlaws.

QUOTE: House members are banned from lobbying on Capitol Hill for a year after leaving office (Mr. Pomeroy’s term ended in January), but Mr. Pomeroy, a Democrat, has teamed up with his former chief of staff, who is not subject to the restriction, as a lobbying partner.

QUOTE: In a verdict that brought a decisive close to a case that has haunted this city since most of it lay underwater nearly six years ago, five current and former New Orleans police officers were found guilty on all counts by a federal jury on Friday for shooting six citizens, two of whom died, and orchestrating a wide-ranging cover-up in the hours, weeks and years that followed.

QUOTE: Some of these nations are using Red Notices to pursue political opponents or economic targets, according to a five-month investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Because of the way Interpol is structured, there can be little recourse for those who are unjustly targeted.

QUOTE: The federal agency overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the taxpayer-owned mortgage finance giants, failed to refer to criminal investigators and other authorities almost 100 complaints about possible foreclosure abuse and mortgage fraud at the companies over a recent two-year period, according to a report issued late Tuesday by the inspector general of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

QUOTE: Morgenson and Rosner write with barely suppressed rage, as if great crimes are being committed. But there are no crimes. This is how Washington works. Only two of the characters in this tale come off as egregiously immoral. Johnson made $100 million while supposedly helping the poor.

QUOTE: Representative Anthony D. Weiner, a rising star in Democratic politics who many believed would be the next mayor of New York City, admitted on Monday to having had inappropriate online exchanges with at least six women, and repeatedly lying....There was a striking absence of public expressions of support from his colleagues, and the House Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, called for an ethics investigation into his conduct.

QUOTE: ...Russia wants the world to believe that it abides by the rule of law. “It has a Constitution, courts, judges and established procedures,” said Pavel Ivlev, one of Khodorkovsky’s lawyers. But, Ivlev adds, “You also have the reality that everything is controlled by Putin and his friends.”

QUOTE: Mr. Richardson said in a statement that suggestions that he appointed judges based on campaign contributions were “outrageous and defamatory.” His supporters call the case politically motivated, pointing to the involvement of two prominent Republicans, including Gov. Susana Martinez, who succeeded Mr. Richardson in January.

QUOTE: the Senate’s harsh report — contrasted with the Justice Department’s inaction — provided further evidence for those who complain that the agency has seemed skittish about taking on public officials following the fiasco that resulted from the 2008 corruption case against the late Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, which was ultimately dropped amid charges of prosecutorial misconduct.

QUOTE: The vast expenses and unsavory alliances surrounding the highway have become a parable of the corruption and mismanagement that turns so many well-intended development efforts in Afghanistan into sinkholes for the money of American taxpayers... There have been 364 attacks on the Gardez-Khost Highway.

QUOTE: “Now, under the guise of ‘transparency,’ the Obama administration reportedly wants to know the political leanings of any company or small business, including those of their officers and directors, before the government decides if they’ll award them federal contracts.”

QUOTE: An ugly, expensive campaign for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court is but the latest example of what is now common in judicial elections: millions of dollars in misleading television ads, subsidized by lobbies that have cases before the bench.

QUOTE: The allegations include age and gender discrimination and the promotion of employees supportive of the Democratic Party… The workers said they raised the allegations “because of a hostile work environment, retaliation and/or prohibited personnel practice.”

QUOTE: Now, a class-action lawsuit... says that five of the eight Queens judges are not just difficult, but also biased against the applicants — many of whom are poor or immigrants — and have systematically denied benefits to the disabled by making legal and factual errors.

QUOTE: In hundreds of cases reviewed by The Times, employees who sexually abused, beat or taunted residents were rarely fired, even after repeated offenses, and in many cases, were simply transferred to other group homes run by the state... Only a quarter of sexual abuse cases were reported... Former regulators, employees within the system and advocates have grown increasingly dismayed at what they say is the state’s tolerance of abuse of the residents, whom the state refers to as “consumers” in its records.

QUOTE: Italy significantly trails European Union counterparts on equality indicators like employment of women or women in leadership positions, and indignant women say the latest scandal [the Berlusconi sex scandal-Ed.] highlights a troubling message: the way for a woman to get ahead in Italy is to sell her soul, if not her body, to powerful men.

QUOTE: Elected officials should consider imposing ethics rules on oil and gas companies that do business with the federal government, the Interior Department's acting inspector general plans to tell the House Natural Resources Committee...

QUOTE: Buttressed by the legality and impunity that international sovereignty conferred upon their actions, too many of Africa’s politicians and officials twisted the normal activities of a state beyond recognition, transforming mundane tasks like policing, lawmaking and taxation into weapons of extortion.

QUOTE: everyone wants to know how Mr. Greene, an unemployed Army veteran who had been completely unknown until Tuesday, inexplicably defeated a heavily favored former legislator and judge to become the state’s Democratic nominee for the Senate — and the state’s latest political circus act.

QUOTE: Magomed Yevloyev was openly feuding with the region’s leader, Murat M. Zyazikov, when the two men happened to board the same flight from Moscow. Barely half an hour after the police escorted Mr. Yevloyev, 36, off the plane, he was dropped off at a hospital with an execution-style wound....Almost two years later, the case serves as a lesson in how the legal process can be strangled.

QUOTE: Long-standing congressional ethics rules allow almost any kind of trading and investment, subject in general to the judgment of individual lawmakers. Those rules also allow spouses to have jobs in areas that touch on a lawmaker's activity or investments. Moreover, lawmakers are not required to abstain from voting or divest themselves of stock when most potential conflicts arise.

QUOTE: there is uncertainty about whether she is up to the task of remaking the Minerals Management Service, an agency widely recognized as one of the most dysfunctional in government. Agency scientists and other employees complained that since taking the post in July, Ms. Birnbaum has done almost nothing to fix problems that have plagued the minerals agency for over a decade.

QUOTE: the United States Treasury Department prepared to declare him a drug kingpin and a major figure in the international narcotics trade....The president [of Guinea-Bissau] is still nominally in charge, but officials in the region worry that the nation has effectively fallen into the hands of a drug baron.

QUOTE: Coke, 41, rules via a combination of violence, corruption and philanthropy, experts say, and the unrest in the Jamaican capital this week is a result of competing interests: those who want him handed over for drug crimes versus those who consider him a benefactor.

QUOTE: MAROANSETRA, Madagascar — Exploiting a political crisis, Malagasy timber barons are robbing this island nation of its sylvan heritage, illegally cutting down scarce species of rosewood trees in poorly protected national parks...

QUOTE: Haitian officials here say they did not use lethal force but rather found lifeless bodies when they entered the prison....But an investigation by The New York Times casts doubt on the official version of events...

QUOTE: the violence was an omen, beginning a wave of unsolved attacks and official harassment against journalists, human rights activists and opposition politicians around the region, which includes the Moscow suburbs, but not the city itself. Rarely, if ever, is anyone held responsible.

QUOTE: U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has refused to comply with numerous orders from a new U.N. personnel tribunal to hand over confidential documents and other sensitive information needed to resolve legal claims by U.N. employees of unfair treatment...

QUOTE: ...Alabama learned that its hottest issue — whether electronic bingo is illegal gambling, or a harmless way to raise revenue for governments and charities — had become the subject of a federal criminal investigation. Even by the normally unsightly standards of Alabama politics, the fight had become downright ugly.

QUOTE: a Defense Department contract worth up to $360 million to transport U.S. military goods through some of the most insecure territory in Afghanistan. But his company has no trucks. Instead, Wardak sits atop a murky pyramid of Afghan subcontractors who provide the vehicles and safeguard their passage. U.S. military officials say they are satisfied with the results, but they concede that they have little knowledge or control over where the money ends up.

QUOTE: Representative Charles B. Rangel stepped down on Wednesday as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee after losing support within his party because of ethics violations....The ethics panel is still investigating more serious accusations regarding Mr. Rangel’s fund-raising, his failure to pay federal taxes on rental income from a villa he owns in the Dominican Republic and his use of four rent-stabilized apartments provided by a Manhattan real estate developer.

QUOTE: Gov. David A. Paterson falsely testified under oath during an ethics investigation into his acceptance of free World Series tickets last fall, according to the State Commission on Public Integrity, which announced on Wednesday that it had asked prosecutors to determine if criminal charges should be brought against the governor.

QUOTE: the ethics committee declared that lawmakers are free to raise campaign money from the very companies they are benefiting so long as the deciding factors in granting those "earmarks" are "criteria independent" of the contributions. The report served as a blunt rejection of ethics watchdogs and a different group of congressional investigators, who have contended that in some instances the connection between donations and earmarks was so close that it had to be inappropriate.

QUOTE: thousands of pages of government documents, including scathing investigative reports that were kept under wraps, and a trail of confidential memos and BlackBerry messages that show officials working to stymie outside inquiry....107 deaths in detention counted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement since October 2003...

QUOTE: Afghan political analysts observe that Ghazanfar and Zahid Walid are striking examples of the multimillion-dollar business conglomerates, financed by American as well as Afghan tax dollars and connected to powerful political figures, that have... emerged as part of a pervasive culture of corruption here.

QUOTE: There are no hard figures on nepotism and favoritism at the United Nations, but the ranks of the U.N. Secretariat and U.N. agencies include scores of children and grandchildren of the organization's luminaries and foreign diplomats.